Abstract:
Plastic strains arising in the zone of fatigue crack initiation are estimated with the aid of time-averaged speckle images on a sample of 09G2S steel with two grooves 2.5 mm in radius. It is shown that the fatigue fracture appears owing to localization of irreversible processes in the region less than 1 mm and the limit value of tension plastic strains is on the order of 10$^{-1}$. As an indication of fracture, it is proposed to use the fact that the normed temporal autocorrelation function of radiation intensity reduces to a negative value.